365 Words/Day

           I saw her when she was alone, just like I am now. The light of the dingy streets became beautiful in her bottomless eyes, and her waves of hair shone despite the murky air of the city. Regardless of the plain covering of mussed, torn jeans, and jacket, her skin shone; she was a jewel in the midst of silt and stone. 



           With erring mortal vision, she could not have seen the inky figure slipping about in the shadows of the alleyways. She could not have heard his dreadfully silent approach. She didn’t even think to suspect anything after her hellish day, divided between work and school. So that was when— and who— the boy decided to strike.

            He clutched at his side a serrated blade with merciless hands, gnarled from begging on the streets. And his eyes, vacant of humanity, brimmed with pain and famine. He asked for her money, speech lulling in complete exhaustion. He was hungry.



            It was as if the devil had possessed him as he flitted behind the girl, and pressed the weapon against her throat. He asked her once again, despite her silence. Choked by the boy’s grip, and rather at a loss for words, she did not reply again— she merely struggled and flailed about in the stone cage of his arms. When he let out a terrifying cry of frustration in her ear, she released every ounce of strength in her possession for an escape against the prison bars that held her captive. 



            But then she fell to the ground, pain spiking in her abdomen, and crimson gore splattering the pavement. She heard, beyond the pounding of adrenaline in her heart, the ragged gasp of the boy followed by the slaps of his feet on the road, growing farther and farther away. She winced at each little sound.



            A single, unblemished hand was placed upon the wound, and it came away drenched in a dreadful shade of red. She heard a single, piercing scream before the world slipped away, and her body was pitched into blackness beyond the dire night. 



            X.X.X.



            I watched the scene repeatedly, feeling each and every time, completely and utterly forsaken. I begged the blackness for any way out- how could I just go back, and get the light in those eyes? How could I stand that girl up again, and send her on her way home? It wasn’t too late— I couldn’t possibly be dead.



            Things like this, so sudden and unrefined, didn’t happen to people like me. How could I be left with nothing beyond a night-stained, solitary street, and hands drenched in innocent blood? I sobbed, screaming into the dreadful ebony to go back. I would do anything to cease this agony, this isolation. 



            “Anything?” spoke an echo, ricocheting about in the walls of my mind. “Surely you would not risk anything for that world, child?”



            Tears streaming down my face, and with a quavering voice, I replied “I want to get it back. I want a life again. I need a life again— this is too soon for me. You made a mistake!”



            The voice chuckled. “I did not make any sort of mistake, my child. That boy did. He caused you this pain— it is in no way a fault of mine. Perhaps you could get him to repay it for you… it isn’t such a horrible idea.” It paused, as if a parent contemplating something as trivial as whether a child should visit a friend’s house or not. “Well, it all depends on if you would even wish to confront this boy, and demand he give you back what he took. Well?”



            “Yes.” There was not a second of hesitation. That boy owed me my life. And I wanted it back.



            Fire began to spurn in my gut, taking the place of the previous hollowness. In that mere moment of conversation, something cried out from my heart, demanding my revenge. I had to inquire about this boy, and why he had acted so savagely— why he had led to my demise, so cruelly.



            X.X.X



            When I stepped out of the ebony, only a few days had passed since my killing. The body had been cleaned up, like a mere spill of juice on the kitchen floor, but people were still wary while prowling the city. I grinned, and once again practiced what the voice had taught me, making body solid and present in the eyes of a human. When I felt the road under my tattered sneakers, and heard a gasp from a lady on the other side of the road, I knew it had worked. It was time for my revenge. 



            Letting myself vanish back into the shadows, completely nonexistent, I sauntered off to greet my murderer. 



            Hours later, I first caught a glimpse of him outside his grimy, so-called “apartment,” pawing through stolen trash cans for food. He was alone. I could feel the grin slathering over my features and the loathing burn in the back of my eyes. Tears scorched down my face as I approached him, and fists clenched at my sides.



            As if the boy could feel me looming behind him, he ceased in his rummaging through the garbage, and looked around the foul alleyway with flat, deadened eyes. Such eyes haunted me beyond belief— and I wanted them closed forever. My grin spread from ear to ear… it was truly as easy as this.



            In an instant, I materialized before him, and let out a piercing, bloodcurdling scream— a replica of the last sound that I had ever heard. I stared into his face now, glistening with fear and remorse as he stumbled away and stammered words of regret.            

            “You can never pay me back with words” came my torn, throaty growl. Your life is hardly enough. 



            X.X.X.



            I sat quietly weeping in the dark, completely devoured by grief. The emptiness within me had been filled with festering hatred, which had then rotted away to leave nothing but despair. Rather than seeing my death over and over… I now saw his. 



            With enraged hands, I had shoved him into one of the walls in his apartment, my howls ricocheting about the room. I clawed at him, and bludgeoned him with my fists, blows strengthened by the pits of animosity roiling in my heart. All the while, he never prayed for help, never lifted a finger to protect himself, never even met my gaze. He had known why I was there, and that he had been devastatingly wrong in what he did; the dole of losing me had overwhelmed him. He had never meant to kill me. My death was an accident, of sorts, and yet, his was complete murder. He had just wanted a little money, and after all, I’d been the one that fought. 



            I look upon that moment with the sheerest of horror at my actions. It astonished me that such cruelty could exist within a single person, let alone myself. I could not comprehend what I had done, nor the strange light in my eyes when I crushed, killed, and scorned the body of the dead boy. It had to be a dream, but I knew that something so morbid could never be a product of even my own ridiculous imagination. 



            Each time I witnessed the scene, my clothing would be drenched with the mourning that flowed freely down my face, but my hands would remain limp at my sides, and my legs too weak to stand up and run as far away as I could…



            I wailed out to the velvety stygian, once again calling the voice to console me. 


            
“Why are you so sad? You killed the boy, did you not?” replied the voice. After my mangled response, the Devil spoke again, “Did you not get what you wished for? You are alive again.”



            I convulsed with sobs, and bowed my head with repentance. I felt the flare of hostility once again at the Devil for cheating me, and through my tears, I whispered back “Yes… yes…”

“Sir.”

            I have decided that I was meant to be alone. Through the years of what most would call a “normal life” – parents, school, work—the realization came to me like the ink dripping from a soulless pen.

            I sit and think, the images swirling in my mind; a lone swing, screeching stiffly back and forth under the weight of a glass-eyes child; a grin plastered across the boy’s face in each and every photo in his family picture albums; the lone apartment in which I sit now, awkward and empty.

         “Sir.” I felt the hand clap upon my shoulder, retrieving me from the reverie of the curling smoke-like ink of the letter. I blinked once, releasing the paper from my clenched fingers.

         “What did you find?” I turned around to face the man. “Anything new?”

         “Yes, sir. Ernest Grey is a twenty-eight year old white male, Columbia University graduate—English and Philosophy Majors—but jobless for six months.” The officer flipped a sheet of paper over the top of his clipboard and handed it to me, showing me the finely featured face of the man we were investigating. “No immediate friends or family members other than his father, whose name is registered as the owner of the apartment. Also, a man by the name of Thompson came up, apparently the guy’s therapist—“

         “A damn English major… no wonder.” I chuckled, gesturing to the letter. “It sounds like a novel, that.” The officer pursed his lips impatiently, waiting for the conversation to gain relevance again. I coughed, “Any relation to the incident this morning?”

         “We’re still trying to determine that, sir.”

         “Good. Well, get to me when you have more Intel.” The officer turned away with a curt nod, and I glanced back at the letter, searching for something that I did not know.

           It feels as if I was born into this world without a single person to see me, love me. I am different, you see—not stupid, nor genius, not happy or depressed, beautiful, or even ugly.  I’m just set aside from the rest of the world, watching.

         Idiot, I thought. This guy’s a damn idiot, glorifying himself like he’s some sort of superhero. I nearly found myself laughing at him, poor guy.

            This place of mine, removed from the trivial things of human nature, allows me to feel things that few else seem to. Everyone else seems happy, unable to contain their delight when faced with even the most simple things. It’s almost annoying—I’m sure everyone’s seen it before.

            When I was young, I attempted to do this too—I pretended, posed with the children surrounding me. It was part of my desire to belong; instinct, you could say. I thought that I wasn’t supposed to show what I truly felt. I thought I was wrong, and I tried to fight the ever-flowing streams of confusion and abhorrence at the actions of everyone else. Yet, having experienced what I believed to be the majority of humanity and nearing the age of thirty, I have given up. How can I laugh when people are so horrible? How can I shout with joy when those that flood the city streets are so useless, so self- centered?

         I was about to stop reading entirely. I guess you could say that I always prized myself of my own strength. My job, my life, whatever my situation was, I never got the freaking easy side. Strength, power, whatever anybody wanted to call it, was something to be valued. The people that truly had it, after all, were the people remembered today from thousands of years ago.  And this guy, this guy… I flipped through his portfolio, scoffing at the luck, the background, the family photos. Damn rich. Damn happy. Damn no excuse.

            When I look at myself in the mirror, I don’t dislike what I see. I observe the sweeping of my jaw—like my father’s—and the unkempt hair, chopped short by my own scissors. The muscles that had broadened my shoulders and added a spring to my step have shrunken, leaving a once powerful man bony and gaunt. Maybe my family was right to call the therapist. Mr. Thompson. He helped me quite a bit, I think. He got me out of my house for the first time in six months, he got me to try and get a job, even talk to my father. I appreciate him more than he’ll ever know.

             It was winter when I first heard the crunch of the snow from under my own two feet, and when the wind that whistled through the city worked its way through my jacket to my skin. I couldn’t tell if the tears in my eyes were from the night’s frost, or the triumph that billowed in my chest.

             I was jerked back to reality when the pealing—or rather, the blaring—of humans echoed inside my skull. Masses of tenors, baritones, sopranos, blended into one senseless and illiterate voice. Such cacophony made my ears buzz and my eyes water, and I wished nothing more than to turn tail and run. But this was what Dr. Thompson helped me with. What I felt then was a mere ghost of the fear I had felt before.

            I gazed at the golden light, bleeding across the pavement, and down into the belly of the subway station. I could feel something from within me, urging me forward, imploring me to challenge myself.

            When I finally reached the floor of the subway station, I slunk into a deserted corner and allowed the rim of my hat to shadow my features. For a while I just listened to civilization’s clamor, ricocheting off of the walls and bounding about the seemingly endless tunnels that spread away from the station in either direction.

           Among the select few that planned on taking the late night train I could see quite a few characters. First, an old man with a winter coat all too large for him, vacant eyes staring down the tracks. A woman with a child glued to her side, packaged intensely in winter garb, without a ring on her finger. There was a group of young men too, all clutching instruments and laughing together— they especially made me nostalgic, of what, I wasn’t quite sure. 

         I never liked reading much. I wasn’t the scholarly type of man, really. I guess that that was a contributor to my career choice as a policeman. Never would I have thought that I had to do much reading on the job.  A groan escaped my chest and I almost hauled myself off of the wooden desk chair to pester someone else to read the letter. Anybody else would probably appreciate this much more than I did. I couldn’t stand this ridiculous sentiment, begging for pity. At this point the man seemed even more depressing to me than before, if it was possible.

            The person to catch my eye that night was a woman, around her late twenties. Each thing about her seemed warm, ranging from her rusty-colored hair, knotted into a braid down her back, to the pair of bottomless brown orbs that rested above rosy cheeks. I almost wanted to go up and talk to her, she seemed that pleasant. 

            Something inside me twinged for just a moment. I squinted, and once again read through the description before forcing myself to move on.

            I was about to move on to the next group of people—a somewhat mysterious group of teenagers, squawking hysterically— when the wail of the incoming train shook the very tiles on the walls, and startled me back into the shadows. I hadn’t even noticed how far I had drifted out from my hiding spot.

            In my desperation to disappear once again, I had neglected to notice the clatter that the girl’s books made as they fell to the concrete, followed by the buckling of her knees. I didn’t even see the fluttering of her eyelids before she tumbled onto the track.

            My heart sank, and instant terror plunged within me like liquid steel. Everyone in the station gawked, crowded about, and even screamed at the girl to wake. But the train came ever closer, and no one was taking action. The old man did not want to risk his already hideous life, the mother had her child to take care of, the musicians didn’t want to risk their futures, and the other numerous faces all thought themselves to be too important altogether. Somebody else would surely act.

           And somebody else did, apparently.

            My eyes widened, and I could feel my lips gape. I was yelling back at the boys, telling them to come and see what I’d found; some answers.

            I never even noticed the shock in my legs as I jolted down to the tunnel, where the woman lay. A ribbon of crimson trickled from the crown of her head, a stark comparison to the porcelain of her skin.       

            Hearing the swelling rumbling of the subway, my hands lurched to the woman’s shoulders, shaking her into what I hoped was consciousness. 

            I dragged her to the edge of the platform, shoving the girl upwards.  All the while I saw the light coming at the other end of the tunnel, slicing through the previous blackness.    Sweat slipped down my back as I caught sight of the head of the train, threatening to run me down. I scrambled for a grip on the brim of the platform, trying to pull myself up.

            Then the train arrived. What felt like hundreds of hands grabbed hold of my jacket and yanked me away from my otherwise impending death. It took me minutes, sitting there, panting and rendered useless among those crowds, to realize that I had been saved.

         The dozen or so of us, the officers, crowded around the paper, hung on edge at the story before us. This man, the poor, miserable, depressed man, was a hero. A miracle.

            When the world ceased it’s spinning, I stood up from my position on the floor and simply stared. Another crowd had gathered around the girl, who was also sitting up, a dazed expression spilling across her face in tears and in her incoherent mutterings. 

Her words never reached me; thunderous applause took their place. The station was now packed with bystanders to this later deemed “Act of Heroism”. People hooted in approval and thudded me on my back. Some even snapped a few photos.

            But I was drowning in a sea of utter torment. It was all too much.

            I needed to get out. It felt as if the bodies that surrounded me were walls, pressing my lungs, making it impossible to breathe. I could feel my face contorting with the old “fear,” it’s chill crawling over every inch of me.

            By the time I managed to escape the glow of civilization, I was still shaking horribly, despite having shot up the temperature in my apartment and having huddled under countless blankets. I gave Thompson numerous calls, ignoring the lateness of the hour. He never responded.

            During that time, nothing went through my head at all, other than the girl. Her face, her aura, and her eyes all haunted me completely. I only had to wait until the morning paper arrived to see her face again.

            WOMAN SAVED BY A MYSTERY MAN

            With nearly trembling hands, I tossed the paper aside, and scrambled for the newspaper article that had been torn from this morning’s paper, featuring the tired face of a young woman and the blurred photograph of a man running away from the camera.

            “He did it.” I muttered. “He really did it.”

            But I couldn’t stand to look at it. The photo, the innocent girl, the remembrance that nobody would even move an inch to save her, it made me think more. It made me think again those dark thoughts of detachment, that humans are worthless creatures, holding their own lives far above those of others. I couldn’t stand it—

            I didn’t care to see the rest of the letter. It was like any other suicide note I’d ever seen, with condolences to loved ones, more rambling, insufficient excuses for letting themselves die.

            Just the man’s courage, I thought, shouldn’t it have been enough to give him the will to live? How could it possibly come to this—he had saved one life only to try to abandon his own? Despite the self- destructive mess that they found him in, I knew Ernest Grey was stronger than he thought.

            X.x.X.

            “Sir.” 

            I mumbled something incoherent, peeling myself off of the desk at the waiting room. Man, I was getting tired of people interrupting me with “Sir.” Before responding to the nurse before me, I rubbed my eyes, feeling as if the lids were dragging down to the polished linoleum floor. 

            “Yeah?” I muttered groggily. ” How is he?” 

            “Stable,” said the nurse in her high, precise voice. Her stance reminded me of the clipboard clamped under her arm, rigid and businesslike. “You may see him now.” 

            I nodded, stretching my arms as I stood, before lumbering down the night- lit hall of the hospital. As I reached the door to the single room, I hesitated— what could I possibly say to this man?

            I sucked in a short, nervous breath and pushed open the door. Instantly his eyes met mine, cold, almost, but curious.

            “This wouldn’t happen to be your letter, would it?” I waved the paper around while taking care not to crease it too much.

            His face remaining carefully neutral, and taking care to avoid the dozens of tubes feeding into his arm, the man sat and gazed at me with his head cocked to the side. 

            “What do you want?”

            Unsure, almost, I stretched out my hand for him to take, hoping that he would. And as he did, something akin to relief settled into his expression.

            “Ernest Grey…” I began, plastering my own police disguise in a poor attempt to hide the prickling of the tears at my eyes. “Thank you, son. Thank you… for saving my daughter.” 

X.x.X.

AS ALWAYS— CRITICISMS WELCOME!!! :)

Chapter 2:
I made my way down the polished streets of Verre, taking care to glance at those that passed me by, nodding politely to those that made eye contact. People, I thought, were interesting. So shallow on the outside, visible to anyone that so much as walked by, yet hidden away deep in their own skin, beyond the eyes and the bones and the muscles and the heart, there was something, someone there with a purpose, or at least some semblance of life. Otherwise, why would we be here, right? It wouldn’t make sense just to live for what was on the outside. Or even the layers of tissue on the inside. It was something much, much further down. 

My feet stopped as the Main Hall came into view, slightly obscured by the array of water and silver bells in the fountain that decorated the courtyard before it. Glancing around quickly and seeing no one, I strolled forward until my hands touched the stone that rimmed the clear, flowing water. Smiling, I closed my eyes and listened to the pleasing tinkering of the bells, almost harmonizing with the low gurgle of the stream. 

“Pretty.” 

At the sound of a voice, my mouth hardened, face froze. Immediately I wrenched open my eyes and attempted to compose myself, bringing back the side of me that I had been trained to show. But something in me just stopped all of a sudden. 

There was a young woman standing before me, her expression like she was staring into a fog; mystified by her blindness, or rather, what she could actually manage to see. She turned to face me, smiling brightly, kindly up at me as if we were anyone but strangers that had randomly came into contact on the street. 

“It’s exciting, right?” she murmured, “Preparing to hear our own futures?” 

Of course. She was there for the ceremony, too. Of course. She was my age, nicely dressed, no doubt highly ranked. Same as myself, it would seem. 

I quirked the edges of my mouth up, a mere fraction of her own grin, and nodded silently. 
She continued to stare at the fountain, then stole a quick glance at me before resuming her trance. “I’ve never seen you around. Did you ever go to Academy?” 
I shook my head. “No,” my voice rumbled. “I was taught at home by my father.” 

“Man of importance, is he?” 

“You could say that.” I muttered. He was a scientist. A geneticist. A creator of new products and theories to further enhance our nation. The best in the world, as a matter of fact. I had practically grown up in his lab, enviously watching him concoct hundreds of chemicals, harshly colored vials of what to feed the future. 

“Mmm…” the girl said, crinkling her brow slightly. “You’re bleeding.” 

All too quickly, I ripped my hands up to my face, revealing the thin slice of the stone against the heel of my right palm. Blood smudged my skin, threatening to stain the sleeves of the pale, pressed shirt I wore. Wonderful. 

“That doesn’t look so good,” the girl mentioned. “You should visit the Office in the Main Hall. They’ll have something for it. You wouldn’t want it to scar.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw the girl reach up, pressing her fingers to her temple as if she had a sudden headache. I didn’t think much of it. Maybe she had taken too much medicine this morning. How we lived, I guess it happened frequently enough. 

I sighed and glanced down at my injury again, wondering how it was that this thing made me imperfect. This stupid little thing, pain. Everybody wished they couldn’t feel it…. But in my case, I almost wish I could. Just so that I wouldn’t have to run anymore. Just one stupid gene— one of hundreds, thousands, millions— gone. And what would have been a blessing before Omeria would be an anomaly now.  My grandfather had had this too, my dad said. And my brother was sick as well. My grandmother had a fake finger, even. I guess you could say flaws ran in the family.

My family was a part of this so-called underground network, I guess you could say, along with a few other families. Both my mother and my father’s families as well had been part of it. They’d even been assigned their marriage within it because they had wanted to keep it ‘in the lineage.’ We were those that cheated the government, those of us that banded together to hide our imperfections. We had always called ourselves the Fractured. Those that must defend themselves from falling away to the depths of poverty due to our cracks, smoothing them over on the outside. Working to make ourselves seamless.  

“It’s tough, huh?”

I snapped back to the world, the girl’s voice reeling me in. I looked at her, almost aching in response to the kindness with which she smiled. The warmth in her voice, in her round brown eyes; I could only describe it as Summer. 

“What is?” I murmured, now sinking  my bleeding hand into the pool below and watching the crimson spiral about in ribbons. Summer watched me for a moment, just seeing the blood dissipate. 

“No, nothing,” she grinned. ” Just talking to myself. Trying to make sure my life doesn’t unfold before my eyes quite yet… Seems like I was just here watching my older sister get her her job and her house. That was six years ago now. You have any siblings?” 

“Yeah.”

She chuckled,  ”You’re not very talkative, are you?” She made eye contact with me again, raising her eyebrows, the tantamount of my own expression. “It’s okay—”

Summer got cut off by the warning bell of the Main Hall. The ceremony was starting soon. 

X.x.X.

Author’s Note:

HA! This makes up for more of the days I’ve lost— almost three times 365 words! Woot! 

But yeah, seriously, is the story too cliche? I’m incredibly socially awkward as well, so if the human interaction is too weird, then… I need to… do something about it… XD

Many stories, it would seem, both start and end with mirrors— take this one for example, with Ezra Greyson’s smooth, solemn face reflecting off of its crystalline edge. He looked flawless, bred throughout centuries to be the tall, broad- shouldered, bronze-haired, blue- eyed marvel that he was today. Nobody had ever poked or prodded or joked at him for being beyond regulation, having a few extra pounds, or a little asymmetry here and there. Flawless indeed. My own thought nearly made me break into laughter— truly, it was no joke how imperfect I was. Am. Still.

“Grey!” cried Mother, followed by her softly shutting the door of the kitchen. “Breakfast!”

Releasing a sigh, I gave a small shrug in my suit, and raised a hand to my opposite arm before pinching the skin. Hard. Just to make sure I was awake. Just to see if I felt something. As always.

Promptly arriving in the kitchen, I took a seat at the table, smiling at the family before me. Mom, with her curling auburn locks and heart- shaped face, Dad and his calculating eyes and square, stern jaw, even Colton, my younger brother, with porcelain skin stretched over his finely crafted bones. We were the ideal genes of Omeria. Possessors of the DNA that ordinary families would just kill for. We were the pinnacle of beauty, of intelligence, of society. At least according to the government.

A plate of toast and jam was set before me along with a series of polished silverware. “Make sure you don’t have too much,” mother warned, wagging her slender index finger back and forth teasingly. “You’ll be too nervous for the ceremony. Not to mention bloated. We don’t want future scientist Mr. Ezra Greyson looking fat for his job assignment photo.”

I managed a smile and rolled my eyes. That’s right, I thought. I had to care what I looked like now. Really care. I had been riding on my family’s own status until now, but at twenty years of age, and receiving my assignment for life, I was an adult. One wrong move, and I would sink an entire Echelon deeper into the crevices of society. Which was incredibly… undesirable.

I shuddered to think of those putrid cities, living miles and miles— practically entire provinces— from my own city of Verre, which bloomed with only foremost Echelon citizens, people given entire homes and offices and other innumerable privileges by the government in order to maintain a top- notch gene pool for the future.

Ever since The War of All, which history worked its completely unoriginal naming magic upon, the evolution of what was left of the human race became the world’s highest priority. Money now is negligible, unlike how we’ve been taught how it wasn’t quite like that in centuries before. Health, however, along with all other aspects biological splendor, is the key deciding factor for survival now. It’s ironic. Despite our— what was it?— hundreds of thousands of years on the planet, we could not progress much farther forward from the need to reproduce only for the sake of carrying on the race to it’s most aesthetically pleasing extent. We will never learn.

 X.x.X.

Author’s Note:

Well. Yah. Great Start. I miss, what? Three days? Four? So much for posting every day… XD

SO IT WILL START AGAIN! I am making up with lost posts today, with this abnormally large post… which is like double 365 words… yeah…

But then, to anyone who is actually reading this, tell me stuff about my writing! Is anything missing? Do I keep making weird grammatical mistakes? Is my main character intolerably stupid? DO you even like the story—to cliché?  Tell meeee… XP

iamteenagewriter:

We need to stick together.

When I leave the room, Mrs. O’Mallie’s kind face opens up once more. She murmurs to me. At first I don’t understand, but I listen more closely; she says to remember myself. Stay in reality. 

Suddenly a loud beeping rings out, and Mrs. O’Mallie’s eyes roll back, spinning away from consciousness. Into a place where the machines can never get her. Where she will never be tormented by the horrid silence of the attendants as they drag me from the room, screeching unintelligibly, until I am pinned down once again with them whispering false comforts into my ears.

And suddenly, I was through with everything. Just everything. Like it all exploded at once, boiling in my heart, sweeping through my brain. I needed to get away. I couldn’t accept these people. Not anymore. I didn’t want to die like Mrs. O’ Mallie, all alone, all helpless. Here. 

With otherworldly strength, I throw the attendants off of me and begin to sprint away, my atrophied muscles creeping slowly back into use.  I spring down the steps, the countless plainly clad nurses running after me, only half-trying.

A smile lights up my face, only a ghost of hope, and it soon vanished as a mirror in the hall catches my attention. Surely, I think, the lights of the siren made me some demonic beast. A cry of anguish rises from my throat, and my ragged fingers bury themselves in my graying hair. Truly I was insane, to not have known what I had become, what the accident was. A shudder racks through my bones as I sink to my knees, gnarled and old. The words of Mrs. O’ Mallie continue to ring in my ears:

Remember. Find Reality.

And so I had found it in front of me— the reality— that my life had slipped away, countless years gone by, without a single recollection. I really was delicate. I really was fragile. As fragile as Mrs. O’Mallie herself. 

When the fingers of the attendants reach me, begin to pull me away, I decide to give up. I decide to stay here, in this house of insanity, where, hopefully, I will be forced once again to forget. Everything.